Mary Wollstonecraft-by Maggi Hambling-an unsuccessful sculpture

The symbolism  is old- fashioned. Perhaps symbolism always will be “conservative”. If you use symbols there is the presumption that they will be understood. It belongs perhaps  in the 1890s. Rodin would have recognised the form of this monument but he would have laughed to scorn its primitive manifestation . It is thoroughly old-fashioned in a fairly superficial way. In terms of symbolism this focus on an isolated  woman would  have been understood  by Rodin or Ibsen.  But they would have found the work empty and banal. The tiny figure is supported by some kind of   vague swirl or vortex.I have seen a report suggesting that this is a swirl of females, but cannot find any photos which suggest this.It would certainly be in keeping with the old-fashioned symbolism.

 I have nothing much to say about the figure's nudity.If it is connected with the symbolism then that is fine by me. But the pose is inexpressive. Most monumental figures in the recent past have not been shown naked.Male portraits often have bare shoulders and partially naked chests. Sometimes, but  not often, they wear a toga which has the function of simplifying the forms and associating the subject with some sort of status-a parliamentarian as  perhaps a Roman senator.Some nude male memorials do exist.

The figure by Onslow-Ford in Oxford which serves as a memorial to Shelley is such a thing.It isn't a portrait of Shelley. It certainly does not represent him as he was cast from the sea at Viareggio. It is an idealised male figure representing  pathos and the loss of great promise.This is what is clearly represented in the work. What Hambling's work represents is not clear.

Ms Hambling's sculpture is a poor likeness to Mary Wollstonecraft -if likeness be intended. A decent portrait exists by MW's contemporary John Opie and if it provided any inspiration to Hambling it nevertheless did not lead to anything resembling MW.  Did it have to, you may ask. Perhaps it doesn't matter if the sculpture does not look like MW. You might quote the remark attributed  to Michelangelo that no one would remember how an individual Medici actually looked in a hundred years or so after the chapel was completed. But in this case we do know in a reasonable way what Mary Wollstonecraft looked like.And if you take the view that likeness is unimportant then the sculpture fails all over again because it does not instantiate any feelings or ideas connected with feminism,  as far as I can see.

I have mentioned elsewhere Dalou's ability to produce a striking and incisive modelled  portrait of Delacroix. He did not have Delacroix as sitter and might have worked from photos or even Delacroix's self-portraits. Nevertheless he has produced  an excellent portrait. It was of course founded on his superb understanding of anatomy. 

That understanding is lacking in the Hambling  and so it seems to me is any imaginative engagement with the subject. In this particular work the neck seems a little too long. The proportions of head and neck to the rest of the  figure don't seem right.The attempt to model hair fails  entirely.The modelling of the mouth and associated muscles is incompetent.In terms of the great tradition of sculpture this is poor.

The plinth is feeble and does not help to present the statue. Perhaps you don't want a C19 plinth which separates subject from audience. Well ,C19 plinths were much better designed than this one-or the support for the recent Fawcett memorial. They also served to focus on and protect the sculpture.They and the sculpture aimed for a certain coherence.The plinth here is dreadful.It is the most generic  thing imaginable. In quality of work it reminds me of the awful mass produced gravestones which litter modern cemeteries. This base was never considered creatively as part of the whole. Rodin spent much time and energy studying the problems of presenting The Burghers of Calais. Should it be high, or low and accessible? Believe me, he did not think a plinth, support, or base was irrelevant.

Mary Wollstonecraft's commemoration was ,long overdue but this sculpture is a disaster.Britain is collecting a lot of monuments which have little artistic merit. There is now a craze  for commemorating just about anything you care to think of. This has resulted in a cluttering of the environment of the environment with banal, sentimental, crass, feeble, unimaginative. This is one of them.

OLD BEECH TREES AT OLD MOOR HOUSE

Just before the lockdown I visited a favourite spot in Northumberland. Here are some of the old and very twisted beech trees growing there. I think that they suggest the human form in a quite striking way.

CADELL AGAIN-IONA NORTH END

This very fine Cadell view of Iona is coming up for sale. at the estimable Edinburgh auction house of Lyon& Turnbull  on Thursday 5 December. There are two other fine paintings by Bunty in the same sale. I have mounted adjacent  one of my photos of the actual scene. I wasnt aware of the match when i took  the photo.

Dunstanburgh-or Not?

This small watercolour above, by Turner, is on show in Berwick with a small selection of other works by him depicting Northumbrian scenes. The exhibition runs until 13 Oct 2019.

The sketch is part of the Turner Bequest and the cataloguers and commentators on the painting are uncertain what it it represents. They are right to be uncertain. Some, like Eric Shanes believe that it is likely a view of Dunstanburgh: others such as David Hill are reported as believing that Shanes is wrong. I tend to Hill's viewpoint.

The sun is either rising or setting. You can see its reflection in the water.If the central mass represents the bluff on which Dunstanburgh is sited-  and it does look a little like the view from the Heugh to the South, then the sun is rising quite far to the North. Would that really be possible even at midsummer?. It is most unlikely to be sunset but I suppose someone might claim that the light is reflecting in the meres inland of the castle.Nothing really fits.

When I first looked at the photo it seemed to me that Turner is showing a windmill on the left of what may or may not be a rocky outcrop. There seems to be a windmill and some trees to the right of it.There seem also to  be a couple of hesitant mark above but I now see that these are being interpreted as hints of a castle. The marks are crude and do not correspond to any possible viewpoint for Dunstanburgh.

I have walked over this area since childhood and still do so regularly. I have never heard or seen any traces of a windmill at Dunstanburgh. It can be a windy place but who would want to take their corn to such an isolated spot?I have also seen many illustrations of Dunstanburgh by artists such as by John Varley and the A W Hunt drawings of Dunstanburgh at the Ashmolean. In none of them, if I remember rightly does a windmill appear.

 Turner's views of Dunstanburgh are usually from the South and he at least understood the uneven nature of the site which falls from left to right in his views, something which is not always observed by artists. The fall in reality can be so extreme that it can appear that the base of the Lilburn Tower is higher than the top of the Eggynclough Tower.

Addition Nov 21,2020
I cannot find anything to suggest that this is really a watercolour of Dunstanburgh, or even the start of one.
You can see a photo of the drawing   in Gerald Wilkinson's Turner's Colour Sketches 1820-1834,this is clearer than my illustration.He calls it Promontory and Setting Sun  (page 191). It seems to me quite significant that Wilkinson makes no identification whatsoever for the subject.This work just cannot be Dunstanburgh, it has more of the block like nature of Warkworth-but I'm not suggesting that it is Warkworth.

Loch Creran, Argyll.